The Day of the Bees
by celrock
Summary: A second generation story for both fandoms. When the local organization, Camp Blindy is getting an opportunity to learn about bees, from Nadine, a college professor with a degree in Environmental Science, who does some bee keeping on the side, the Rugrats along with their offspring, and the Shortman family, take this opportunity, to venture on this new experience.


Author's Note: After what I experienced yesterday, I sort of wanted to do a short little one-shot reflecting my experience with this whole ordeal, using characters from a couple of my favorite fandoms. I hope you all enjoy it!

The Day of the Bees

Summary: A second generation story for both fandoms. When the local organization, Camp Blindy is getting an opportunity to learn about bees, from Nadine, a college professor with a degree in Environmental Science, who does some bee keeping on the side, the Rugrats along with their offspring, and the Shortman family, take this opportunity, to venture on this new experience.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters from Rugrats and Hey Arnold, they're the property of their original creaters. I own the OC's of Zack, Violet, Silvia, along with the offspring of the Rugrats families, and I also own Savanna's offspring Emily, while Savanna is owned by DemonAloisTrancy, Peter is owned by TCKing12, Jesse is owned by JJJB, and the Hey Arnold offspring OC's of Andrew, Stella, and CeCe, the children of Arnold and Helga, are owned by Nairobi-harper. It should also be mentioned, that the events of this story take place three years post the events of my story, 'The Offspring Meet the Offspring,' and the kids in the Shortman family are now roughly four-years-older than they are in Nairobi-harper's story, 'The Shortman Family.'

Location, Massachusetts, July, 2049

It was a typical summer for everyone, the Pickles, Wehrenbergs, Albanies, Finsters, Devilles, and a family they'd soon be meeting for a brief time, the Shortmans. The summer camp for the organization known as Camp Blindy, previously known as Camp Vision for years, until a new owner of the camp, changed the name, because those kids who could see, kept making fun of the director's blond hair, so she decided to have some fun, by naming it Camp Blindy. The camp was in full session, and this summer, they would be getting to take on a very unique experience, learning about bees, from local college professor of environmental awareness, Nadine. Tommy, seeing he had been blind since age fifteen, and his wife Silvia, who was visually impaired since birth, with no vision in her left eye, and a small range of useable vision in her right, were regular helpers at this program, and along with that, because Zack's aunt was also blind, while sometimes, she would participate in activities with the group, she couldn't attend this year. However, that didn't stop all of the families from getting together with their kids, even those who were sighted, though Chuckie was quite nearsighted, and he wondered himself sometimes why he hadn't lost the rest of his useable eyesight, would all join together, enriching their kids' lives with unique, innovative experiences, and a better understanding of the disabled population.

The same was true for the Shortman family. Helga Pataki Shortman, who worked in Business and Communications, and Arnold, who was a self-employed psychologist, made roughly $350,182.00 a year, allowing them to save up enough money to take a vacation every summer. This particular summer, their three kids were either teenagers, or on the verge of tenagehood, when it came to their eleven-year-old daughter CeCe, the youngest of her two older siblings, her sister Stella being thirteen, and her brother Andrew being fifteen, and while Stella continued to engage in sports, hoping to persue a career in playing soccer someday, CeCe was very much like her mother, taking up a pashion for writing, but was also good at drawing too, and and also took an interest in fashion, admiring Rhonda Lloyd, the famous fashion designer. However, while the girls excelled in sports, fashion, and the creative arts, Andrew was interested in the sciences. Whether it was biology, chemistry, or physics, he enjoyed it all, and he was quite looking forward to this trip to visit Nadine, a friend of his father's, who made environmental sciences a career, and was taking up bee keeping in her spare time.

Nadine use to live in Hillwood, Washington as a child, but moved away post finishing high school, to explore the world and study animal behavior. She always had a fascination for insects, and she normally frowned upon keeping animals in captivity, or even killing them for food, thus, resorting to being a vegetarian at a very young age, but when she found out while in college, getting her Bachelor's Degree in Biology, and later on, her Masters in Environmental Science, she discovered that keeping bees for their wax and honey production was not only helpful to both, the bees, and to humans alike, it was also nice to know that such production of wax for candles, and honey, not only gave products to her fellow humans, but no animals would be harmed in such production. Learning this fact, Nadine became a regular bee keeper, and excited at taking on this hobby, which would sometimes, bring in some spare dollars if she sold the wax she produced to Yankee Candle, and the honey she produced at various fundraisers, she ran across Arnold on Facebook, and invited his family to come visit her. She was now settled down in Williams Town, Massachusetts, teaching an Environmental Awareness course at Williams College during the fall and spring semesters, and doing her bee keeping on the side, in particular, during the summer months, when bees were busy making honey, and Nadine had some time off, as the summer semester was shorter, and while one year, there were enough students signed up to have her teach a summer session of her course, this didn't happen to often. So she'd reserve her summers for her bee keeping, and to do a bit of traveling. Andrew Shortman though, being a lot like Nadine was at the age of fifteen, was really excited for this trip, and couldn't wait to go. So it was settled, this year, the Shortmans would venture from Hillwood, to Massachusetts, not only to meet up with Nadine and get a good lesson in nature, but shortly before taking their trip, it was reported that the famous singer, Dino Spamoni, had died of a stroke in his late eighties, and sadly, this was not a false alarm. He truly did die at Hillwood Hospital, as Phoeby, who worked there in Neurology, had to sadly, oversee this famous patient, and she was the one to alert the terrible news to her husband Gerold, who then told Arnold and his family.

While the Johansons had been invited by the Shortmans to come with them to see Nadine, even though they had more than enough money to go, making a joint salary of over $486,000.00, because of Phoeby's busy schedule, she sadly, couldn't take any time off, and Gerold had to go out of town to visit his mother Sherice, who was recovering from hip replacement surgery. She and Martin moved out to the country after Martin's retirement, but as a result, they had a nice little cottage that was very lively and inviting to their many grandchildren. And sadly, while Nadine had become closer with Lila, and she was on summer break from her job as a third grade teacher, she and Brainy barely made enough money to make ends meet, with their joint salary only being roughly $80,000.00 a year, it was hard for them to take a lot of vacations. And Rhonda, being very busy this time of year in New York City with fashion designing for various celebreties, while she never cared much for Nadine's passions for the creatures of nature, she did support her best friend, but sadly, work wouldn't let her take any time off. So Nadine was very thankful that Arnold and his family could venture out for what would be her first time of teaching a bunch of kids about bees, up at Sheep Farm, the home of her precious bees, and where she went every day, to tend to her honey beauties of nature.

It was finally the day of the big event, and everybody was heading up to Sheep Hill. This included King Peter Albany, his wife, Queen Violet, and their fifteen-year-old daughter, Princess Rosemary, Chuckie Finster, his wife Nicole, and their thirteen-year-old daughter, Melinda, Tommy Pickles, his wife Silvia, and their two sons, twelve-year-old Darin and ten-year-old Keenan, Phil Deville and his husband Dil, along with their adopted twelve-year-old daughter, Danielle, Jesse Barrow, his wife Lil, and their twin boys, nine-year-olds Keith and Kelly, Sean Butler, his wife Susie, and their nine-year-old son Chris and their seven-year-old daughter Patti, Zack Wehrenberg, his wife Kimi and their twin eleven-year-old daughters, Abbie and Casey, and Brody Cowhoon, his wife Angelica, and their daughters, seven-year-old Zabrea, and five-year-old Camden.

Everybody traveled together in Peter's huge purple and black limo for this event, to save on parking spaces, as they weren't sure what the parking was like at Sheep Hill. They arrived to see a tall, slender looking figure with her blond hair braided to look like the legs of a spider walking towards them. Sure Nadine had grown quite tall when she reached puberty, but one thing never changed about her appearance. Her hair remained in the same hairstyle she had been doing since the age of four, much to Rhonda's dismay, but Nadine didn't care.

"Good morning everyone, and welcome to Sheep Hill." Nadine said as the passengers departed Peter and Violet's limo on to the grassy field that lay ahead.

"Please, make yourselves comfortable in our facilities." Nadine continued, pointing to a small wooden cottage nearby.

Everybody headed over to the cottage, where tables and chairs were set up, along with a small area filled with toys and other activities, used at the various summer camps that ran here throughout the summer months. Tommy and Silvia were not only attending this event because it was being sponsored by Camp Blindy, but they agreed to do a craft project with the kids who were participating, where the kids would get to make honey bees out of different pieces of tactile material.

"Son, could you please take these crates over to the table that's set up on the far left-hand side of the room, and lay them out separate for easy access?" Tommy asked Darin, handing him several boxes of various art supplies.

"Sure thing dad." Darin said with a smile, as he did as his father instructed.

The bee's bodies and heads would be made out of hard card stock, while they had small buttons for the eyes, wax paper for the wings, and pipe cleaners for the antenna. Everybody helped lay out stations for the kids to do, as while Tommy and Silvia were doing the honey bees arts and craft project, Chuckie and Nicole were doing an activity with telescopes, where kids could look through the different telescopes that simulated different vision problems, and Zack, seeing he knew Braille from his youth, growing up with an aunt who was totally blind, would be along with his wife, Kimi and two daughters, helping out with the Braille station, where people could come up, and Braille their name, either using a Braille typewriter, better known as a Brailler, or a slate and stylus.

Soon, participants in the camp program started to arrive, and all of the kids, except for Rosemary, who would rather sit in a corner and text her boyfriend Z Weller on her phone, and Angelica, who had a lot of pressing lawyer business to attend to, constantly slipping away in the shadows to conduct work related business on her phone, all participated in helping the kids with the various projects. Even some members of the general public showed up, and to everybody's surprise, Savanna Green showed up, with her eight-year-old daughter Emily, who had sadly, been recently diagnosed with Glaucoma, causing her to start losing her eyesight. For this reason, Savanna, who had recently been through a divorce, enrolled her daughter into the Camp Blindy program, and they decided this event would be a great way to introduce her daughter to the program.

"Hi Tommy, remember me? I'm Savanna." Savanna greeted, walking up to Tommy and Silvia at the arts and craft table, and pulling out a chair for her daughter to sit in.

"Wow! Savanna! I haven't seen you in years! How are you doing?" Tommy asked.

"I've been better. Recently got divorced, and my daughter has been diagnosed with Glaucoma, so we're checking out this camp for people like her, and when we heard about this day of the bee exhibit up at Sheep Hill, we thought we'd come check it out. We've been up in Vermont for a while, but might be moving to Massachusetts, now that the divorce has been finalized, and I now have soul custody of my daughter." Savanna explained, taking a seat across from Tommy.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that." Tommy said, while Silvia was getting Emily set up with the materials she'd need to make her honey bee.

"Here's some glue, and here are the different materials used to make the honey bee on the piece of paper that's in front of you." Silvia explained.

"Thank you Silvia." Emily said with a smile, getting started by gluing the body of the bee on to the paper.

Meanwhile, the Shortmans were on the highway, trying to find the turnoff for Sheep Hill. They had passed the sign for Beast Hill, much to Helga's dismay.

"Arg! We'll never find it!" Helga protested from the passenger seat of their rental car.

"Relax Helga, we'll find it." Arnold said, patting her on the shoulder, as he continued to drive, looking for signs.

In the invitation from Camp Blindy, inviting everyone to the event, as Nadine gave one to them, while it mentioned Sheep Hill, it didn't give an address, just that it was off the left-hand side of Route Seven heading towards Williams Town. And sadly, because Nadine didn't have a lot of room at her house, the Shortmans stayed at a hotel, and all that was available was a motel place in Pittsfield. At that moment, none of the kids were paying attention to their parents in the front seat, because Stella was busy watching a soccer match on her phone, Andrew was studying a Natural Geographics magazine on birds, and CeCe was busy writing in her diary she got last Christmas from her mother. She was writing vigorously about how her best friend of late was constantly ignoring her. Not returning her emails or phone calls, and whenever she did reply to them, it was always the same excuse. Her brother constantly pissing her off, making her too angry to do anything, causing her to sleep accessively, never being around to hang out or do anything fun. And when she was awake, she was off babysitting, and CeCe wasn't even sure if she wanted to be friends with this girl anymore. She was the youngest daughter of Gerold and Phoeby, and her older brother and her's relationship reminded their father of the relationship he had with his older brother, and CeCe's best friend's uncle, who was no doubt, uncle Jameo. Even to this day, while their father was mostly pleasant with their aunt Timberly, who no doubt, spoiled them rotton when she came to visit, it wasn't uncommon for their dad to still argue with uncle Jameo when he came to visit sometimes, or worse, when they went to visit them, and what was going to be a stay at their house, would turn into a hotel stay at the last minute.

No matter, CeCe wasn't looking forward to this day of the bees, but naturally, she was made to go to this event by her parents. Her father being the encouraging one, telling her that this would be a good experience for her, and she might learn something new. She crossed her arms and scowled, but knew she had no way out of it, so used the long car ride wisely, to get her anger over her friend out of her system, before having to face other human beings, and plenty of strangers she didn't know. At least the previous night, they all had a good time, attending the Green River Festival at a coffee hut called Mass Moca up in North Adams. Normally, while this festival focused around the genres of blue grass and folk music, this year, they did jazz, and in particular, several jazz standards that Dino Spamoni performed, to pay tribute to the late singer. Arnold was pleased they got to attend this event, since sadly, the day of their flight to Albany, New York from Hillwood, was the day of Dino's real funeral, and while Arnold had attended his funeral twenty years ago, sadly, now, that one didn't count, since he found out later, the man had faked his own death to boost record sales, and to this day, his offspring were very familiar with the tales of their father's youth, that being amongst them.

"Look Helga, there it is! Sheep Hill!" Arnold said, seeing the sign up ahead as he rounded the corner into the gravel road that led up to the farm, that was nearly over two-centuries-old.

They parked their rental car, to which the kids put up their pieces of entertainment, stepped out, and Nadine came out of the honey hut to greet them.

"Arnold! Helga! You made it! We'll be starting the extraction of honey activity shortly if you'd like to join us, but other arts and craft projects are happening in the small farm house over there." Nadine said, pointing to the same building the other participants were in at the moment.

"It's great to be here Nadine, and thank you." Arnold said with a smile, heading towards the small house, his family following close behind him.

Once they got inside, they all split up and went in different directions to mingle with the other people there. CeCe though, being very much like her mother at that young age, didn't wish to have anything to do with this dumb trip, until her eyes fell on the most gorgeous man she had ever seen. A blond boy slightly older than her, who was helping some of the smaller kids make honey bees at the arts and craft table. She was looking at none other than Darin Pickles, the oldest son of Tommy and Silvia. However, being like her mom, she couldn't admit her feelings to him in the nicest manner possible. Silvia walked up behind her and caught her off guard.

"Would you like to make a honey bee?" Silvia asked the eleven-year-old brounette.

CeCe spun around to face the redheaded adult that stood before her.

"No I don't want to make a dumb old honey bee. Crimeny! Can't everybody just, leave me alone?" CeCe snapped, slumping down in a chair in a corner and burying her head into her diary, hoping to not be noticed.

"I was just asking is all." Silvia said, heading back over to the table to help her niece Danielle glue the eyes on to her bee, as they kept sticking to her fingers.

While everybody else continued to engage in the various activities around them, and Stella went over to the Braille station, where Kimi helped her braille her name, CeCe couldn't stop staring at Darin, but rather than getting up and introducing herself to him, she tore a blank page out of her diary, put it into her mouth, and threw a spit wad at him, that barely hit his head.

"Hey!" Darin cried, looking up to see what had hit him in the head, but nothing led him to any clues as to where it came from.

A few minutes later, Nadine appeared in the doorway to the small house.

"We're ready to do the honey extraction activity now, if anybody's interested in participating." Nadine said.

Most of the group went over to the honey hut, except for CeCe and Emily, who decided to go sit in the grass near some trees and get some fresh air. CeCe would have rather stayed put in her chair, but something told her she'd be made to at least go outside, so she reluctantly followed the rest of the crew out of the house to where the honey extraction would be taking place.

The group headed into the small, warm, honey hut, where the process took place. Nadine walked over to the far side of the small room, where she plugged a special knife into the wall, and removed some honey comb from one of the wooden frames, that was a bee hive.

"What is that?" Andrew and Keenan asked eagerly.

"This is honey comb." Nadine explained, holding up the honey comb to show everybody.

"And this, is a special knife. The heat from this electric knife, will help me to scrape away the wax that forms on top of the honey comb." Nadine continued, working with her knife to scrape the wax off into a pan.

"Is that where candle wax comes from?" Danielle asked.

"It sure is. You've heard of the term, beeswax before, haven't you?" Nadine asked.

Danielle and several other people in the small room nodded.

"Well, that's where it comes from. Now, whoever is interested in helping me put honey into jars, to prevent you from getting too sticky, I do have some disposable gloves for you to wear." Nadine said, as Violet passed out gloves for people to put on.

Everybody put them on, and each person came up to Nadine, where the wax was soft enough, allowing them to take a comb, to scrape away at some of the wax, and get down to the honey that the bees had produced. Then, Nadine placed the honey comb into a special device, where she turned a crank, extracting the honey from the comb. As everybody watched and looked around at the various honey combs to be extracted, they noticed the honey was of different shades.

"Why is the honey different colors?" Melinda asked.

"That's a very good question Melinda. Honey is made from the pollin of flowers. The color is based on the color of the flower. Yellow flowers will produce honey that's of a lighter color, while red flowers, will produce honey that's of a darker color." Nadine explained.

"Ah, that makes sense." Melinda replied, waiting her turn in line to give it a try.

Then, each person placed a jar at a small opening down at the bottom of the bucket, where the honey dripped out of the honey comb into their jars, in very much a similar fashion to maple cirup dripping out of the bark of maple trees, when the trees are tapped. Soon, each family had a jar of honey to take home with them, Darin did the jar for his family, while Chris did it for his, Phil did it for his, Violet did it for her's, Andrew did it for his, Jesse did it for his, as Keith and Kelly started to grow bored, so they went outside, where they went skipping rocks, and having a frog catching contest in the pond nearby, and Melinda did a jar for her family. While Abbie and Casey were interested in helping to extract the honey, they didhn't care to eat honey very much, so they opted not to fill up a jar. When everyone was finished, while Nadine and a few of the adults were helping her to clean up, the kids all decided to run outside and play tag. Chris ran up to Darin.

"Tag, you're it." Chris said, tapping Darin on the shoulder.

He started running, but failed to watch where he was going, when he accidentally, stumbled over CeCe's legs, that were spralled out on the grass, causing Darin to land face down in the grass on top of her. She looked up from her diary to stare at him.

"What are you doing toe head?" CeCe snapped, as Darin sat up and brushed himself off, staring at the brounette girl that sat before him.

"Oh, sorry mam, I didn't see you." Darin said apologetically.

"Well, better luck next time." CeCe snapped.

"Whatever." Darin said, staggering to his seat and running off to catch up with his brother Keenan, cousin Danielle, and the rest of his friends.

A short while later, everybody headed inside the house for lunch, where they were served slices of cheese pizza and either bottled water or juice boxes of fruit punch. Some of the people at this event, Rosemary and Angelica included, would have preferred more variety to their food, but Violet reassured her daughter that this was an event for kids, so naturally, they're going to serve kid's food here. The fifteen-year-old princess let out a scowl, but reluctantly took two slices of cheese pizza, realizing that if she didn't, she'd starve to death.

When everybody was finished with their lunch, everybody who was interested in checking out some real honey bees, went into the bathrooms to change into long pants and sweat shirts, as recommended to them by the invitations that were sent out. Angelica and Rosemary decided not to go, and while at first, Melinda was feeling nervous about going, she talked it over with Darin during lunch, and with some encouragement from her best friend since toddlerhood, she decided to try it out. The same held true for Chuckie, who was encouraged by his best friend Tommy to check it out. And he certainly didn't want to look like a coward in front of his daughter, so decided to take a deep breath, and give it a try.

" _Glad I thought to pack my jeans and a sweat shirt then._ " Chuckie thought to himself, heading to the bathroom with his clothes to get changed.

Once everybody was changed, Nadine led everybody down a narrow bumpy pathway out to the bee yard, where several wooden hives sat stacked up.

"Mmmm! It smells like barbecue!" Abbie commented to her sister.

Casey nodded, noticing the same thing. However, they'd soon discover that somebody grilling hamburgers and hotdogs was not the case. They got off of the narrow path, crossing a small wooden bridge that led up to the hives, when Nadine turned around and put her hand up to stop them.

"Before we can go any further, everybody needs to put on these vales and a pair of gloves." Nadine instructed, handing out rubber gloves and bee vales to everybody.

"Why do we have to wear this stuff." CeCe snapped, not wishing to wear the bee vale, because she thought covering her head would make her look ridiculous.

"It's to protect you from getting stung as easily." Andrew said.

"That's correct. While honey bees can only sting once, because after they sting, they lose their singers, wearing protective clothing that covers your bodies, the stingetr is more likely to get caught in your clothes, and less likely to get caught in you." Nadine explained, as everybody put on their vales, and she came around, helping to tie the vales on to their bodies, around their torsos, so they stayed on snug.

The smaller the person, the more times the strings had to be wrapped around their torso and tied together.

"What a bunch of hores hockey. Those bees won't sting my face." CeCe protested, tossing her vale off and throwing it on the ground, not wishing to appear ridiculous in front of everybody.

Soon, everybody got up close, CeCe bringing up the rear of the line, as everybody checked out the man made bee hives, and observed the honey bees at work. At this time, Nadine walked around with a wooden squeeze box that smelled of smoke.

"What's that?" Zabrea asked.

"This is a smoker. I'm gonna pass this around and using your dominate hand, squeeze it like an accordion. This will send the smoke into the air." Nadine said.

"So that's what we were smelling." Abbie whispered to her sister, noticing the smell of a barbecue smoker was more intense.

It was the smoked wood for the bees they were smelling, which was similar to a smoker in a barbecue grill.

"Nadine, what's the smoke for?" Chris asked.

"The smoke helps the bees resist the urge to sting." Nadine explained, as the smoker box was passed around to everybody, and they sent some smoke into the air.

After this was done, exploring the hives was next. Those who couldn't see or who had limited vision, were guided by Nadine and Zack so they could feel the hives.

"This feels wet and squishy." Tommy commented, feeling the side of the hive that the bees had recently finished.

"Yes, that's fresh honey that the bees are starting to make." Nadine explained, turning the hive over, to let Tommy feel the other side.

"And this side feels dry and flat." Tommy said.

"That's right. They haven't started making honey on this side, but chances are they'll have this side finished by nightfall." Nadine said.

This was all very fascinating to everybody, getting to check out the hives, and admire the bees at work.

"Does anybody else have any questions?" Nadine asked.

Patti raised her hand.

"How many bees live in a hive?" Patti asked.

"Over eighty-thousand bees live in there." Nadine replied.

After getting to check out the hives, they all participated in two more activities before heading back to the house. First, Nadine came around with a paint brush, and had each person paint a spot on each hive.

"What's the paint for?" Chuckie asked.

"It's to mark the territory, plus, painting each hive, and naming each of the queen bees, will help me to do better research, as I plot the migration and pollen gathering paths for the various bee colonies I help care for." Nadine explained.

"So we really get to name the queen bees?" Stella asked.

"You sure do, and since each of you are in families, I'm gonna let each family, pick a name for each of my queen bees, which, there are eight of them." Nadine said.

Each family huttled together and whispered to one another, coming up with a name for their queen bee. The Albanies decided to go first.

"We're gonna name ours Jackie." Peter said, as Nadine gave him a paint brush, and guided him towards Jackie's hive, where he made a mark.

The next family to go was Zabrea and Camden's family, and Brody announced the name.

"We're gonna name our queen bee Cynthia." Brody said.

"Can I paint the hive daddy?" Zabrea asked.

"You sure can sweetie." Brody said, as Nadine handed her the paint brush, and guided her to Cynthia's hive for marking.

"We're gonna name our queen bee Silvia, after our mom." Darin said with a smile.

"Great choice Darin." Nadine happily replied, as Darin painted Silvia's hive.

"We're gonna name ours Kira, after my paternal grandmother." Melinda said, being handed the paint brush to paint Kira's hive.

"Well since you chose our original choice, we're gonna name our queen bee after our great aunt Celeste." Casey said, while Abbie painted the hive.

"We're gonna name ours Lucy, after our maternal grandmother." Chris said, while Patti painted the hive, as both of those groups agreed to share the activities with their siblings.

"And I want to name our queen bee after me, Stella." Stella said.

"You know Stella, you were named after my mom, your grandmother." Arnold said.

"Really dad? Cool!" Stella said, while Andrew painted the hive.

"And we're gonna name ours Betty, after our maternal grandmother." Keith said, while his brother Kelly painted her hive.

"Hmmm, what to name mine?" Danielle said, a bit stuck on a name.

After thinking about it, she decided on a name.

"How about Lulu, after my late paternal grandmother on my dad Dil's side of the family. May you rest in peace." Danielle said, painting Lulu's hive.

"Excellent choices of names here! And not to worry, I made sure to write the names clearly, so I can tell Lulu and Lucy apart." Nadine said.

They then started to walk away from the hives, right when everybody heard a yelp from CeCe.

"Outch!" CeCe cried.

Everybody turned to see her pressing her hand to her face, where she had been previously wearing the vale, but to not risk embarrassment, she had taken it off, and likewise, one of the honey bees stung her, as a stinger stuck out of her left cheek. Hurt and feeling embarrassed, CeCe covered her cheek before anybody could look. Nadine rushed over to her.

"CeCe, what happened?" Nadine asked.

"A bee stung my face." CeCe cried, bursting into tears.

"That's why we wear the vale, why did you take yours off?" Nadine asked.

"It looked silly." CeCe said, moving her hand away to reveal the stinger sticking out from her cheek.

"CeCe, bees don't like tresspessers, and will sting if they feel threatened. You didn't use the smoker, or get close to the hives, but you were close enough that one stung you. Come on, we'd better get you cleaned up." Nadine said, leading CeCe back towards the rest of the group, where they crossed back over the bridge and the narrow bumpy trail towards the farm house.

Everybody wearing vales and gloves took them off and threw the gloves away while they handed the bee keeper vales back over to Nadine. However, CeCe went inside, where Darin followed her to the bathroom. She was about to open the bathroom door to enter and clean herself up, when she got the feeling she was being followed, so spun around to see Darin before her.

"What are you doing here?" CeCe asked.

"I wanna help you. Here." Darin said, taking her hand.

"Leave me alone I'm fine." CeCe protested, but Darin wasn't going to have any of it.

The girl was hurt, and he wanted to help her. He went into the bathroom and got a paper towel wet with some soap and water. Gently, he helped removed the stinger from CeCe's face, and applied some soap and water to the wound. Shortly afterwards, the pain in her cheek started to go away. CeCe started to relax and breathe more easily, when it suddenly hit her who was helping her. It was the same boy who she admired from across the room, but was too shy to admit it. The same boy who tripped over her when they were outside, and feeling guilty about throwing a spitball at his head, she spoke up.

"Thanks for helping me, and sorry about being so nasty to you earlier. My name's CeCe by the way." CeCe said, shaking the boy's hand.

"I'm Darin." Darin said with a smile, not letting her rude jestures towards him bug him.

He figured she was just playing hard to get, as he had never seen her around these parts before, but noticing the resemblance to her mother, having a similar facial structure to her's, but with brown hair instead of blond, he figured she was her daughter.

They returned to the main area of the house and CeCe introduced Darin to her parents, confirming his theory to be correct.

"It's time to go Darin." Silvia said, packing up the arts and craft stuff and carrying it out to Peter's limo.

Darin turned to CeCe, pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket, and handed it to her.

"Here, for in case you'd like to keep in touch." Darin said.

CeCe stared down at the piece of paper, where Darin had scribbled down his phone number. It was also apparent, he had it in his pocket for several days, seeing it was slightly crumpled, and smelled of bubble gum. She tossed it into her pants pocket, pulled out her diary, scribbled something down on a blank page, tearing it out and handing it to Darin.

"Here Darin, as a thanks, for helping me." CeCe said.

"I hope we can keep in touch." Darin said.

CeCe quietly smiled and blushed, but quickly looked away, running off to catch up with her family, who were getting packed up and piling into their rentle car, her sister Stella, sipping on a bottle of water, as Helga decided to drive back to the hotel, while Arnold curled up in the back to take a nap, letting his youngest ride in front with her.

Soon, everybody left Sheep Hill, except for Nadine, who had some more work to do there, and as the Shortmans were driving back towards their motel, CeCe thought about the day she had. While getting stung wasn't so pleasant, she met a boy she really liked, but while she managed to be civil to him in the end, she wasn't sure if she could really confess her true feelings to him, as she opened up to a blank page in her diary, and started drawing a sketch of the boy. As the car came to a red light, Helga glanced over at her daughter in the passenger seat, curious as to what she was doing.

"What are you drawing?" Helga asked.

"Oh nothing, just, pudding." CeCe said.

Clearly the picture was of anything but pudding, but Helga quietly chuckled to herself.

"What's so funny mom?" CeCe asked.

Helga blinked, not sure if she should tell her just yet.

"Oh nothing, just, you remind me so much of me at that age." Helga said, thinking back to the days when she wasn't much younger than her daughter, pining for Arnold, but would refer to him as ice cream in the company of her closest friends.

"Thank you mom and dad for taking us to see Nadine's bees. My love for science has only grown stronger, and maybe someday, I'll be a bee keeper too, just like Nadine." Andrew said with a smile.

While his mom wasn't much for that type of stuff, she did applaud her son for wanting to chase his dreams, as they rounded the corner into the motel parking lot.

Meanwhile, on the road back to Peter's castle, where the gang would be having dinner together, everybody was chatting with one another about the day they had, while Zabrea was trying to get her mother's attention, who was busy with an important phone call.

"Mommy! I saw real honey bees up close!" Zabrea cried, but her mother pushed her away.

"In a minute sweetie." Angelica said, returning to her phone call.

Tommy, who was sitting in the seat behind her, overhearing this, turned and whispered something to his wife.

"Angelica and Zabrea, are just like my aunt Charlotte and cousin Angelica when she was Zabrea's age." Tommy whispered to Silvia.

"Not so sure about Zabrea, but yes, Angelica is definitely like her mother." Silvia whispered back.

Everybody had a great time, and their day of the bees was a day, that they'd never forget.

The End

Author's Note: Okay for those reading this on or after 07:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on July 29, 2016, you may have noticed how the reviews left on this story don't reflect the current note at the bottom. That's because after taking some time to think about it, I now realize that the note I originally had here was a bit harsh. To Nairobi-harper and DemonAloisTrancy, I'd like to publically apologize for calling you out on your lack of communicating with me in the manner that I did. It was wrong of me to publically lash out like that, and from now on, I'll be sure to contact you privately about such matters, rather than stating them in a note at the top or bottom of any of my future stories, or on my Fan Fiction profile for that matter. Here's hoping you can forgive me for what I did, even though we've already talked this out privately, I felt it necessary to revise this note and apologize publically as well, and hopefully, I'll be back with more stories, sometime soon.


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